Same Old New Year

North Third on North Third Street

New Year’s Day brings with it a generally bloated, hung over, glassy eyed, shouldn’t I be doing something sort of feel.  Not for me, my son slept over last night, but in general.

It also brings a sense of a fresh starts and higher hopes, gym memberships, promises to loved ones, commitments to do better and grow and live and have fun.  It brings change and decisions and new beginnings.

I think that’s why it can also be a bit of a downer of a day.  First, for many of us the real fun is the night before and for many of us, the day after is, well, the day after – the beginning of the hard slog, the dip (already?), the real work, our last day off before getting back to it.  There’s also the ages old argument that with every beginning comes an ending.  When we say hello to something we want to make part of our life, we often have to make room for it – something has to be put on the shelf.  I want to read more, write more, exercise more, spend time with my sons more.  That time is coming from somewhere.  That’s my plan for tomorrow, a time budget: what do I have, what do I want to do, how long does it take, where can I fit it in?

Keeping in mind that I have the attention span of a… ooh, a pigeon!!!

… right.  So downtime, or what some people would call ‘coming back to earth’, is a necessary part of this.  And I’ve learned to budget heavily for it.

I’m always amazed at the self-help blogs out there with people who are self actualized to the point of seeing Nirvana as that place we were last month… wasn’t it lovely?  Up, meditate, exercise, read, practice music, write, get the kids ready for school, spend time talking with them, spend time with the spouse, go to work, come home, prepare dinner, end world hunger, unite the political parties, a chicken in every pot, eternal gratitude, three hours of sleep is plenty, thank you very much.  At the risk of sounding bitter, I could efficiently and productively beat the shit out of some of them.

They can be the productivity version of beauty magazines: they only make you feel ugly.  But thanks for sharing.

So, with these thoughts bouncing around in my semi aware head, I drove into town to meet a friend for a New Year’s drink.  Philadelphia, home of the Mummers, was covered in a light drizzle nearing five o’clock.  Grey sky, wipers squeaking, a little chilly, almost dark.  I realized the day matched my feelings pretty well – melancholy with a splash of anxiety thrown in.

North Third is a good bar, great art, good food and staff, a nice choice for a drink.  Until, while waiting for my friend, I noticed the other people were all young.  Perfect.  Let’s add a growing sense of mortality to the list.  But it was good to be that age once.  It’s good to be this age, honestly.  But, if we’re being honest, it would have been nice to have been that age a little longer.

My friend came and we talked and drank and ate.  The New Year common theme came up:  life, so short, so often taken for granted until it’s almost gone, until the vibrant years have passed and we wake up and wonder how we got here and now we’re going to make a difference, now we’re going to make some changes.  We never seem to find the time, yet, it should be every day, really.  Some little thing can be done to ‘make a difference’ in our lives on a regular basis: pause, breath in, thank someone, feel real gratitude, help someone just a little, call someone, do something you’ve been putting off, reach.  We don’t have to save the world this weekend.  Take the time you’d spend forwarding a funny cat video to call someone.  Steal time from wasteful things to use for little, good things.  And the little things add up.  It all adds up.  Just force yourself to do something everyday, and like exercise, it gets easier and easier and you can do more and more.

Most of us will never be like the productive, self help gurus.  Maybe we don’t need to be.  Maybe we need to look at their advice like it’s a buffet – take what we like and leave the rest.  We can find our own little things to do to move forward, to push ourselves and make a difference.  Little things add up.

We said goodbye, with plans to meet soon and further our task to save the world and I walked through the drizzle to my car, this time it just seemed like rain.

When I got home, I thought about writing again.  Something I put off like a colonoscopy.  So I set a goal to post a NEW YEAR’S DAY POST!  I hacked at it, looked at pictures, funny cat videos (they ARE funny!) and finally got this out.  I feel good about it!  It’s little, it made me feel better to do something and actually get it done.  Of course if I hadn’t watched that video, I would have finished this before twelve midnight and now it’s posted on January 2, 2012, which is just a regular, stupid day.  The important part is, it’s done and the dumb-ass feeling will fade by morning.  It always does.